7th Annual Oscar Fashion Photo Contest Announcement

The time has come once again, boys and girls! The Flickr group is open for submissions of your finest evening gown photos, and the speculation is growing — who will be the best-dressed avatar on the Hollywood red carpet when the Academy Awards are handed out? Around the Grid is accepting submissions for its 7th Annual Oscar Fashion Photo Contest!!

The contest group will open for submissions once this article is published, and the prize pool has been placed in escrow (so to speak). Time to talk to your stylists, find your hairdresser and book an appointment, call in favors at the jewelry stores, and decide what you would wear if you became a nominee for the little gold man. For those considered outstanding in their evening couture and artistic portrayal, there shall be (15 minutes) of fame, (a bit of) fortune, and hopefully fun in playing the game.

Please note, men as well as women are welcome to enter!!! We’ve had quite a few fellows in the past, including one winner! So find yourselves a good formal suit, all you Male Models, and give this contest a shot. Also, this year, humanoids are allowed entry permanently, and we’ll consider child and “family” entries for the first time.

The biggest news: this year’s prize pool is L$50,000. That’s right, fifty thousand lindens! First place will receive L$25,000. So, if you want a chance at filling your virtual closet at my expense, come on and enter!

Please read these rules carefully; there have been tweaks, as there usually are, and it will prevent many misunderstandings, letters/IMs/notecards, and headaches.

No entry fee is required.

A minimum of 20 entrants shall be required for the contest to proceed forward to judging. (Added to increase the pool, since at least one time there were few entries until the last two weeks. If you have friends, encourage them to enter!)

Photos should be submitted, preferably, by addition to the SL Oscar Fashion group on Flickr. (This does not restrict your adding your photo to any other group.) Please read the group rules before submitting photos!! You may also leave a comment to this or future messages concerning the contest, containing a link to the photo. All accepted submissions from publication time of this article until 12:01 a.m. SLT on February 29 (the morning following the live Oscar telecast) will be considered for judging. The group is moderated, and any submissions not meeting the contest rules will be rejected and considered ineligible for entry. The same applies for comment submissions via blog comments. Repeated attempts to submit “ineligible” photos will result in banning, and the Resident being banned permanently from the contest.

Entries may be in any humanoid avatar species available. Maximum of two named avatars in any one photo. Child avatars are allowed. Exception to maximum: “family” shots of 3 avatars (2 adults, 1 child).

(Added January 9, in a clarification requested by a reader) The theme for photographs is on the day and night of the Academy Awards ceremony. While the red-carpet walk is the focus, much goes on both before, during and after. Photographs may run the gamut from preparing for the night to the after-parties. Suitability to the theme will be part of the judging criteria (see rule 11, below).

Multiple entries are not allowed. If you enter, then change your mind and want to do a different dress, the newer entry will supersede the old one. If a duplicate entry is discovered by me, the older entry (based on publication date stamp) will be removed. No prejudice to eligibility or judging shall result from multiple entries, so long as the newest entry is still within the rules.

Photos taken prior to December 1, 2015 (based on publication date stamp) are not eligible.

Still photos only, please; no machinima or storyboards. Post-production is allowed.

Vintage fashion (Real Life vintage style, or Second Life designers no longer in business) is acceptable. Oscar has been around since 1929; there’s plenty of opportunity to dip into the vintage-style closet and your back Inventory.

Vendor cards will not be allowed; neither will photos with any advertising text or logos in the owner’s notes or comments. You will, however, be welcome to submit a “stripped” photo for contest purposes; “stripped” means no text, logos or other extraneous material, either in the photo (aside from a signature) or in the description below, aside from the normal list of who designed what. (Such a list of designers is, indeed, encouraged, especially for the gown and hair!)

Judging: The staff of Around the Grid will review the entries following close of the contest, and plan to announce the winners no later than March 16, 2016 (tentative, subject to change backward or forward). Judging will be based on the appropriateness of the entry to the theme, and the artistic merit. All decisions will be final.

Publication: By entering, you agree to allow Around the Grid the one-time right to republish a reduced-size copy of your photo in the winners’ announcement article in the blog. This will be the only use of the photograph beyond your own publication and other grants of permission to other venues of publication. Your copyright will be noted in a caption to your reproduced photo. We strongly encourage all submissions to be signed in a corner! All photos will be linked to their respective pages in the article where possible, for readers to jump to the photo page and leave comments, faves, retweets and likes, etc.

If there are any tweaks needed to these rules, they will be announced in a future article here on the blog, and this article amended, with notes.

Staff members of Around the Grid are not eligible for prizes. However, we will do at least one article prior to announcement of winners, showing what we ourselves would wear to the big event. (The items we wear will not be indicative of our preferences or choices of winner, but are simply our own choices from available gowns and suits, or items out of our past inventory.)

Prize fund (current as of January 8, 2016)

The total prize pool will be L$50,500, awarded as follows (unless there is a tie):

1st Place — L$25,000

2nd Place — L$10,000

3rd Place — L$7,500

Honorable mention (4) — L$2,000 each

This prize pool is guaranteed, and will not be reduced. If there is an increase in the pool, it will be announced here and in a separate article, and the prizes adjusted accordingly. Beginning this year, due to the increase in the prize fund, prizes will be awarded to the submitter of a given photo only. If in a duo shot, the winners will split the prize. Prizes will be awarded in Linden dollars only;none will be paid in Real World currencies of any form or nationality, in Bitcoins, gift/debit/credit cards, by check, or in any other token/medium of exchange.

Note: I like to write up a few comments about each photo, including the designers of your choices; so, again, a list of the content creators in the photo description on Flickr or your blog is extremely welcome.

You can see past winners from this history page; just click on the year. Good luck, and enter soon, please!

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